Abstract

In our current understanding, not only energy and matter but also time and space were created in the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. A few microseconds after that, the primordial matter consisted of an extremely hot and dense gas of freely moving quarks and gluons. This extraordinary state of matter is called Quark-Gluon Plasma. Today, quarks and gluons are bounded in atomic nuclei, such as protons and neutrons. The Quark-Gluon Plasma can be recreated and its complex nature carefully studied in the laboratory by colliding heavy atomic nuclei at high energies. Over the last decade, different experimental probes have been used to learn more about this peculiar state of matter. In this seminar, recent measurements will be presented and discussed.